Trees...they're all bark and no bite!

As part of our tree study we have been looking at and learning the different parts of a tree. For example, trunk, branch, twig, leaf, roots, flowers, seeds, and bark. Kids have been introduced to some new vocabulary like boll (the part of the tree trunk from the ground to the first branch) and canopy (the crown of leaves that surround the upper part of the trees). 

We took a picture of each child in a "tree pose" of their choosing and used that shape as the base of a piece of tree artwork. Kids first used pencil to draw the shape of a tree embedding their own bodies within the tree (feet=roots, body=trunk, arms=branches). From there, students used crayons to outline their tree features as well as create some bark texture. Some kids even included some creature features like a hole or a nest. After the crayon outline, we added color with watercolor creating a crayon wax-resist effect. Finally, our photos were positioned back into our trees and the beautiful finished artworks you see below! 

Have your child to tell you about their tree. All students were asked to use a deciduous tree (one that loses its leaves each fall) as the model for their tree. The trees chosen included oaks, maples, birches, beeches, or ash trees. Ask them to tell you about the parts of their tree. 

The Great Acorn Hunt!

We've been noticing an abundance of acorns in our outdoor space which inspired us to do a STEM challenge in this mast year! House Table teams were tasked to fill as many acorns as they could gather into a yardwaste bucket with the stipulation that the bucket could not be moved. They would need to engineer innovative ways to move large amounts of acorns using only their own hands and the clothes they wore. 

Kids quickly figured out that a buddy could stuff your hood with a good amount of acorns for transport up the hill. Hats, pockets and even gloves could be stretched to capacity with more. Some kids made an apron pouch with the bottom of their shirt folded up to accommodate even more acorns. Which House Table would win? At the end of the time limit, it looked like one bucket was the most full, but was it? There were a lot of leaves and sticks taking up space in that bucket as well. Time to tally the score.

Counting them all was a challenge that brought us into the thousands! First graders used their math time to group the acorns into groups of 10s and 100s using tally marks to keep track of how many 1000s, 100s, 10s and 1s they counted. This task took a lot of focused work, but we wanted an accurate count! 

Here are the results: 

Feather Island collected the most at 1,334.

Popsicornia came in with a total of 1,302.

Wild Island was just shy of that at 1,301.

And Blue Land finished with 766. 

All together, we amassed 4,703 acorns! 

Each of the house tables did a great job using teamwork in their scavenging and collecting. We returned our hoard to the outdoor classroom for all our local critters to enjoy - blue jays, squirrels, turkeys, chipmunks, mice, voles and deer. Enjoy the pictures below of this exciting challenge!